all your Reads in Here

Loved this book. Loved the main character, the unnamed narrator. There. That's out of the way. Brendan Dubois' character,  The Negotiator , reminded me a little of Lee Child's Jack Reacher. The book also reminded me a little of one of my favorite books about a con man, Stephen Cannell's King Con . This isn't one of those novels with an unreliable narrator. Just because the Negotiator is on the shady side doesn't mean he's lying to the reader. However, there are plenty of other unreliable characters in the book. The Negotiator admits he chose the dark path in life. He has an uncanny gift. He can look at a priceless book, jewels, a painting, and tell what they're worth. So he acts as a go-between in negotiations between parties who don't trust each other, for a price. He does have three rules. No drugs. No human beings (no human or sex trafficking) deals. He won't do anything that he feels is against the best interests of the United States. With on...

I'm breaking all my own blog rules by reviewing Hank Phillippi Ryan's standalone two weeks before release date. But,  Trust Me, you're going to want to pre-order this suspense novel. If it's handled correctly, this should be this summer's Gone Girl.  Ryan has been on the bestseller lists, but Trust Me should be her breakout novel, the one readers will remember. With that kind of lead-in, now I have to say  Trust Me is a difficult novel to summarize without spoilers. It's been over a year since Mercer Hennessey's husband and daughter were killed in a tragic accident, but she's still in mourning. So, it comes as a shock to her when her former editor, Katherine Craft, calls her and asks her to take on a book assignment. She wants her to watch the trial of Ashlyn Bryant, a mother accused of killing her toddler daughter, once known as "Baby Boston" when the body was still unidentified. If Ashlyn is found guilty, and everyone seems to assume she wi...

Darn that Lori Rader-Day. I am not a night person, but once I started Under a Dark Sky , I had to stay up and finish it. It's the story of a troubled woman, caught up in an Agatha Christie nightmare. And, it's just right. Eden Wallace's husband, Bix, a war hero, has been dead for nine months when she uses his reservation at Straits Point International Dark Sky Park in Michigan. She's hated the dark for years, but, after Bix's death, she's terrified. The stay at the park may send her screaming back to Chicago, or help her find solutions to her fears. But, Eden's reservation at the park isn't what she anticipated, a few nights all to herself in a guest house. Instead, she's just one of seven guests in the house. Yes, she has the suite to herself, but her fellow guests are three couples in their mid-twenties. Five of them went to college together, and it's an anniversary that reunites them. When one of Eden's fellow guests is murdered in the mid...